The story of Jesus’ birth is told every year around Christmas, and it’s almost always told the same way. What new perspective could we bring to a 2,000-year-old story that would stir people’s hearts and minds? Then it hit us. Instead of looking directly at Jesus, what if we looked at the woman who gave birth to him?
Jesus was born to a teenage girl. A girl who was scared and forced to travel far away from her home right before she gave birth. A girl who was at the mercy of a man who could have publicly shamed her or even had her killed, but who instead protected and supported her. A girl who gave birth in a stable because she had nowhere else to go. There is such a rich story there that gets lost in the neatly packaged nativity on someone’s shelf.
So, we told that story. And we told it in the sincerest way we could by using pictures of real mothers giving birth and by having a teen mom read the voiceover. Jesus didn’t just appear out of nowhere. His life was not some fairytale — it was very real. His first few minutes in this world looked like anyone else’s, crying in the arms of his mom. His teen mom.
